Come Clean

John 2:1-11

January 20, 2013

Since the beginning of Advent, we have mostly been reading from the gospel of Luke – I’m sure you all knew this before I told you.  And, if we continue, as I do, to follow the lectionary – a prescribed set of texts used by many churches and denominations, we will mostly read from Luke until Advent comes again in December when we will begin our “Matthew cycle.”  Mostly.  The lectionary does a few head fakes along the way. 

Today we get the gospel of John before returning to Luke next week – one of our little head fakes.  Which is fine.  Except the gospel of John cries out for multiple weeks of reading because the author uses tons of symbolic language, metaphors not found in the other gospels, he weaves themes throughout his story that don’t become clear until the very end.  In short, it’s hard to do John justice in a head fake. 

There is SO much going on in this one story this morning.  The wedding of Cana, a well-known, well-loved story, is jam packed with metaphors, significant words, numerology, not to mention allusions to details about the Jewish faith that we do not hold in our heads, understandings of miracles far from ours, and assumptions we can’t begin to unpack in 15 minutes.  “My hour has not yet come,” for example.  What does that mean?  Well, we would have to look at that phrase in the twelve other places it comes up in John before we could start to get a handle on it – and I suspect this would not play well in a sermon.

All of this is to say I’m taking a story where there are a hundred things going on – important things John has to say about who Jesus is and what happens when he shows up – and talking about one small part of it.  If you feel like I’m not addressing the whole passage, it’s not your imagination.

I’m going to talk about the jugs…or why I think it matters that the miracle took place in the jugs. 

When Jesus’ mother tells him the wine is running low, Jesus – after a funny little interchange between him and his mother, that would surely take time to unpack, Jesus tells the servants to fill the jugs with water – fill them to the brim.  John gives us a couple of important details here…these are not just some random jugs sitting around.  These are the vessels that held the water used in the purification rites of the Jewish tradition.  And they were quite big: 20 – 30 gallons each.  Sparing you the details of purification rites at that time, suffice it to say washing before almost any event – certainly any event involving food – was not about keeping the flu from spreading.  It was about making one’s self clean spiritually, not physically.

If, as many have suggested, and I’m inclined to agree, the wedding is a symbol for the great banquet of God where we feast on abundance and love, John is telling us that some believed you had to be purified before you could join in…before you could dine with the divine. 

“Come clean.”  We are familiar with this idea.  This is the requirement for absolution in many settings: formal and not.  Admit it – own it – tell the truth.  If you mess up, the best thing you can do if you want forgiveness is to come clean.  Before you get parole, you have to come clean.  Before you get your cell phone back from your parents after you lied about where you were last night, you better come clean.  Before your housemates find out on their own and have time to build resentment, you better come clean about eating all the Haagen Daz coffee ice cream.  If you come clean, you are more likely to be welcomed back into a marriage, a friendship, a family, a community, society.  It’s the first step, I read in the Des Moines register yesterday, for fallen heroes who want to be restored to their former glory.  (I can’t imagine who they might have been referring to.) 

Come clean.  This was ingrained in religious practices in Jesus’ day.  You only get to come if you come clean – admit to and repent of all that defiles you.  Your mistakes, sins, failings, imperfections had to be washed away before you could be a part of the religious community, and more importantly to them, before you could face the divine.  It’s as if, like looking directly at the sun, God couldn’t handle the site of you with all your deepest failings shining through.  And so water jugs were placed so people could come clean…you weren’t clean until you washed with the water in the jugs.

This is why it’s so important that the miracle of water turning to wine happens in the purification jugs.  Think about what happens…once the wine appears, the water is gone.  The jugs are still there, but they don’t offer the required water anymore.  If someone came to try and purify themselves, they couldn’t because all they would find is wine.  Really, really good wine.  In fact, John tells us by giving us the holding capacity of these jugs, you would find lots and lots and lots of really, really good wine.  But they wouldn’t be able to wash themselves – they wouldn’t be able to come clean.

Jesus, along with other Jews at the time, thought the rites of purification had lost their original intent.  If Jesus and his friends thought about rituals similarly to how we do, I can see why they may have thought that. In our rituals today – our sacraments of communion and baptism – we say that it is not the ritual which makes something true.  The ritual is a sign of something that is already true.  Washing one’s self clean should have pointed not to the fact that someone is “unclean” to begin with and has come clean to approach God.  Washing one’s self affirms that we come clean – when we come, we are already clean to God…it’s showing that we have already been purified through grace.  We come ready to dine with the divine – no matter what.  We can come just as we are, and we are more than clean enough already – sins, failings, brokenness, and all.

The hymn we are about to sing is a hymn familiar to many and surely new to others.  It was written by a poet named Charlotte Elliott in 1835.  As always when reading poetry written so long ago, language has changed and the common theological phrases no longer flow from our mouths.  But whether we would say it the same way or not, I don’t think there’s any missing the core of what she writes of in this poem – at I think the core truth has not changed over time.

Elliott lost the use of her legs as a very young adult, and was essentially house bound from that point on – until she passed away.  Her poetry expressed her struggles with faith, God, meaning, purpose, and we enter into that struggle when we sing her words.

Elliott could not attend church, even though her whole family was very faithful and religious.  She could not be out in the community, active in volunteering for good causes, even though her family was extremely involved in things that made the world a better place.  She struggled with doubt about her purpose and usefulness in life.  She struggled with her relationship to God; what did it meant about the value of who she was – supposedly God’s creation – if she couldn’t do anything.  She struggled with the meaning of Jesus’ life.  She struggled with the age old question of why bad things happen to people – is it punishment for our sins or random cruel events. 

After 13 years being house bound, while her brother was out raising money to build high quality schools for women who couldn’t afford higher education, Elliott sat in her house, struggling, and she wrote the hymn Just As I Am.

Just as I am – though toss’d about with many a conflict many a doubt.  Fightings and fears within, without, O lamb of God, I come!

And the rest of the hymn goes on to express that when she comes just as she is, she meets the free love of God. 

Some of you and others in our congregation not here, I’m sure, can relate quite directly to Elliott’s struggles with purpose and doubt because of physical limitations.  We wonder how to continue to be faithful when we can’t do what we used to be able to do.  I don’t have that direct experience, but when I read Elliott’s story, I can connect with her struggles with doubt, her questioning the purpose of life, the existence of God, the meaning of Jesus’ life.  I have felt all of these things at some point, though born of different experiences.  I know many in this room and beyond have had, or are having, similar struggles for various reasons.

The hymn, Just as I Am, taps into the power shame and guilt have over us.  But the hymn also defies any theology that says we have to be good enough to come before God and receive God’s love.  The hymn speaks to deep internal conflicts I have over whether our faith is about being loved as the beautiful, divine creations we are, or the need to be so different from the broken mess I know myself to be. 

Our scriptures are confusing on this point.  These two things seem to be in conflict – we’re okay, loved unconditionally, and we’re totally broken and in need of some serious saving so we can live as God wants.  And it’s a conflict our scriptures hold almost without comment.  The beautiful passages that reach far to describe a love so big and unimaginable exist side by side with the cries of prophets calling on people to come clean and change their ways lest they risk the wrath of God.  If we are going to be in relationship with these texts we read every Sunday, this is a tension we can’t get away from. 

But it’s worth bathing in the wedding at Cana, in Elliott’s poem, as a starting place.  She was who she was, and at least she felt it wasn’t nearly good enough in the face of the needs of the world around her.  And, though we might disagree with her analysis of her situation, she absolutely worried that the God she learned about in her faith tradition might find her unworthy of love because she couldn’t do what she knew she was supposed to do.

That night in her house, somehow she was able to find that place in our faith that I think everything else stems from – the starting place of our complex, confusing, challenging, difficult faith.  We come…just as we are, and without condition we are loved: bathed in love…lots and lots and lots and lots of really, really, really, good love.  Yes, we are called to things, we are pulled to participate in the world’s redemption and wholeness, but as deeply flawed people who are bathed in love and accepted just as we are.

In the miracle at Cana, Jesus says to be invited to the wedding – the lavish banquet of God – to be able to be a part of it, you just come, and it meets you before you ever even “get inside” so to speak. 

I don’t want to jump the gun, but Ash Wednesday is three ½ weeks from now.  Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent.  Traditionally in Lent, we spend time reflecting on our own brokenness, the world’s brokenness.  We spend time thinking about what it means to come clean – to tell and own the truth about who we are and what we have done to ourselves and others.  There is value, importance, to coming clean in the sense of owning up and making amends.  We know this just from our own relationships with people we love.  Coming clean is a powerful experience that transforms us, those we might be hurting, and the relationships we have with one another.

Lent runs the risk, though, of undermining the spirit of the miracle at Cana – of connecting us to shame and guilt over our shortcomings with no way out of the hold this has on our life.  And so, like Elliott’s poem, I think in Lent we also spend time thinking about our brokenness because there is value to sitting with who we are…truly are without all the masks we use to look better to others and ourselves… because then, when we come to Easter just as we are, having been stripped of our defenses, those things we think we need to be, do, believe, say in order to make the shame go away – when we enter Easter just as we are, the good news of resurrection is that that is exactly how God receives us and loves us.  The stripping away, acknowledging our brokenness is not because we have to come clean – admit these things – before we can be worthy of God’s love.  We do it to remind ourselves that we come clean, worthy, loved, just as we are.

Sometimes that feels like a miracle to us – the moment of feeling loved for who we truly are.  Sometimes, just like with miracles, we don’t believe it’s possible.  If we ever get a taste of feeling like we are enough, worthy of love no matter what is true about us inside or out feels like water has been turned into wine.  But like the wine, the miracle keeps on flowing.    

When that miracle touches our lives, we can’t help but know that there should be no purifying jugs at our doors either.  Only wine served here.   The very, very best wine…lots and lots of it…not matter if you show up early, late, hated, polished, a trembling mass of inadequacy, or whatever. 

We’re so used to the jugs being filled with water.  We’re so used to thinking we, and sadly others, have to be good enough, faithful enough, Christian enough just to come in the door…to be loved.  But if we can sing those words with Elliott – believe that we come and are invited into the banquet just as we are…without having to change…paradoxically we are changed…we are changed into the wine.  When people come, all they will find at the door is lots and lots and lots of really, really, really good wine.  No purification necessary.  Here, we say, you come clean…just as you are.  Amen.